Couple Walking

After getting frustrated going through my clip art collection looking for two people whose facial expressions actually matched this conversation topic, I finally settled on this one.

The inspiration for this strip was in fact not either of my parents, but a former boss who would always answer his phone by gingerly picking it from his pocket and reverently opening it up to answer the call, with a look of absolute wonder on his face. This seemed completely at odds with his otherwise lead-follow-or-get-out-of-the-way personality, but casual conversations and intense screaming matches alike would be abandoned at the signal from the miracle device. This stuck with me for some reason, and now I’ve finally came up with a punchline.

That’s funny because I just changed my ringtone to Also Sprach Zarathustra, mostly because I liked the contrast between this one of the most iconic and awe-inspiring pieces of music and the awfully trivial nature of most of my phone calls. Although for what it’s worth I’m still sticking around with one of these vaguely phone shaped “stupid phones”, so the visual effect is rather diminished (and also, because my speakers arenn’t exactly state of the art either ,and I usually answer before the drums kick in, it sounds a bit like the music from those “dramatic chipmunk” youtube videos, which is arguably less epic).

I’m not sure what’s sadder about these things, people who could previously do fine on a computer having a hell of a time with them, or people acting like the internet is this brand new thing just because this item is mainstream enough for them to own one, unlike those weird TV things with typewriters attached.

What bugs me is people who could program old 80’s VCRs or fax machines (which had no screen or instructions just press buttons in this order and things change) are terrified of a phone that all you do is touch the picture that is labeled with what you want to do.

I have The IT Crowd theme song as my ring tone, which confuses people, since not many people here have ever seen or heard of it. I don’t think Also Sprach Zarathustra would be a good ring tone, though, since I would have answered the phone before most people would have known what it was. It would have played maybe a note or two, and this ain’t “Name That Tune!”

“What bugs me is people who could program old 80’s VCRs or fax machines … are terrified of a phone that all you do is touch the picture that is labeled with what you want to do.”

I’m not terrified of them, just confused. I *think* what gets me is that I spent decades internalizing the idiom of “phone” and cellphones simply don’t match it. Sure, I knew how to work early VCRs and FAX machines. They were introduced and that was how they worked. Over time, they’ve gotten simpler. Phones, on the other hand, have gotten more complex judged simply as phones. My learning curve is probably stretched out because as a friendless weirdo I don’t use telephones much anyway but, regardless of the reason, the simple fact is that I get lost when activating a phone involves more than “pick it up.” It takes unexpected effort and focus to find – on this particular design – the control I have to poke, prod, slide or tickle in order to actually be allowed to talk.

The uncomprehension/incomprehension debate is silly, because the word is used in dialogue. The incorrectness therefore displays a mistake by the character, even if it is caused by a mistake by the author.